


L’Appel Du Vide

by AconitumNapellus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Reminiscing, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 11:50:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13099497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Illya and Napoleon talk about those brief moments in life where one is close to the edge.TW for suicidal thoughts.





	L’Appel Du Vide

Outside the office the world is black and rain is lashing against the windows, but none of that sound gets in here, because Waverly’s windows are bullet-proof, sound-proof, proof against everything but light and warmth, and there is no light and warmth at three o’clock in the morning in a November storm on the edge of Manhattan. The rain hits in violent streaks and slips down the glass, catching the light from inside the room, but it makes no sound at all. There is nothing happening. All non-essential personnel are at home, and even Waverly is at home, no doubt tucked under a blanket deep in slumber, while his two top agents hold the fort. But even Thrush is quiet on a night like this, and the communications system hasn’t whistled in over an hour, and it’s only the deep cups of strong coffee that are keeping Napoleon and Illya awake, because the leather sofa is comfortable enough to send anyone to sleep. The coffee is as dark and black as the night outside, and Napoleon stares down into the liquid, jogging the cup a little so that he can watch the ripples form and move and fade away.

‘You look as if you would like to fall into that cup,’ Illya says with only half a smile; the small kind of smile that comes in the deep of night when most things are too much effort.

‘Drowning in coffee has never been a preferred way to go,’ Napoleon comments.

The entire universe seems to be in that cup, but when he focusses on the surface of the coffee he can see the reflection of the dim office lights and the side of his own head, and the little glitter of his eye. It’s an odd sliver of reality after losing himself in the wordless dark of the coffee, and he feels himself come a little more awake.

‘Liquid can be mesmerising,’ Illya says. ‘I remember when I was in Paris and running experiments on the nature of electrons, we had a water pool to help us understand the motion of waves. Hardly a pool, really. It was a shallow tray, a division with two slits, and an oscillator to cause the waves to form. But one could sit there for hours, just watching the waves running towards the divider and then moving through the slits.’

‘Self-hypnosis,’ Napoleon murmurs. He is visualising that very young Illya standing in a lab somewhere in the Sorbonne, glasses firmly on his face, watching those ripples and deducing things that most minds would hardly be able to comprehend.

‘Something like that,’ Illya smiles. He lifts his coffee to his mouth and drains the cup, then pushes himself up and goes over to pour himself another cup. ‘Something like that,’ he says again as he reseats himself on the sofa, and the cushions flex and mould to his settling weight.

‘Do you ever get that feeling when you’re standing looking into water that you just want to dive in?’ Napoleon asks, because he gets that all the time, that urge to plunge into water and just swim and swim, to taste the salt of the sea or the mud of the river on his lips, and to swim until his excess energy is gone.

‘That urge to just sink to the bottom?’ Illya asks, looking at his cup rather than at Napoleon. ‘To be like a sodden log and just become one with the mud?’

Napoleon opens his mouth, because he didn’t mean that exactly, but he doesn’t speak because he is wondering where this is going to lead. It’s so rare to get a raw glimpse into Illya’s psyche, and he doesn’t want to disturb the current with unnecessary words. It is so quiet and still in this room that it’s as if they’re both sitting on the psychiatrist’s couch.

‘ _L’appel du vide,_ ’ Illya says reflectively. ‘There’s a word for it – or – four words, anyway.’

‘A phrase,’ Napoleon says softly, and Illya nods.

‘A phrase. When you’re standing on a bridge over the Seine, and you look down into the waters, and they’re thick and dark and muddy and they look like they’d just sweep you away. So you imagine just tilting yourself over and letting the water do its work. A giving in. It’s a very inert action, if an action can be inert.’

‘It was a stressful time in Paris, then?’ Napoleon asks.

Illya half smiles, that little smile that Napoleon loves and worries about in equal measure.

‘My first time out of my home country. Immersed in a language I realised I only knew the surface of, embarking on post graduate study, _knowing_ I had to deliver my final dissertation in French, living in a place that felt so different to home. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Paris. Some of the best moments of my life were had there. But – I think it would be fair to say that my time there was characterised by an intensity of feeling, and those feelings weren’t always good.’

‘So, _l’appel du vide_ ,’ Napoleon says softly.

‘The call of the void,’ Illya nods. ‘Yes. It’s not death as an absolute opposite to life. It’s the void. A long sleep. A desire for _nothing_ to replace the fervent cries of the mind.’

‘And you never went swimming in the Seine?’

Illya smiles. ‘I’ve swum in the Dnieper. Happy times. I never wanted to _swim_ in the Seine.’

‘Well, I meant – ’ Napoleon says, then shrugs and reaches out to ruffle Illya’s hair. ‘Never mind. You never answered the call of the void.’

‘Never,’ Illya says. ‘Thoughts like that, they don’t give your muscles time to move. Do you have any idea how quickly the brain processes thought? A dream that feels like an epic can take place in twenty seconds. No. The thought is there, and you’re staring into the water, and then you’ve straightened up and you’re walking on, thinking about picking up some bread on your way back to your lodgings or if you should take your friend up on that invite to a little place in Montparnasse. There and gone, in a millisecond. Unless you’re _truly_ depressed, the void is usually a fleeting thing.’

‘And have you been?’ Napoleon asks.

Illya lifts his eyebrows in question. ‘Have I been – ?’

‘Truly depressed.’ His voice softens. ‘Have you ever been truly depressed?’

He gives a little quirk of his mouth. It’s not a smile. ‘Have I been clinically, certifiably depressed? Depressed enough to fill my pockets with stones and stand on the edge of the Seine?’ He shakes his head. ‘No. Have I been right to the edge of the abyss at times? Yes. Yes, I think most of those who think, have.’

‘Do you – want to tell me about it?’ Napoleon asks gently, carefully.

Illya looks up at him, his eyes a flash of blue. ‘I don’t know there’s much to tell. Paris in the winter. Disappointments. There was a time at Trinity when I thought I just wasn’t going to crack my thesis, that everything I’d done had been on the wrong track. I hit some kind of bottom then. I think I was already on the way down. I spent – about two months as if I’d fallen out of life. Too much to drink. Didn’t get out of bed. Didn’t shave. I almost packed everything up and went home. Perhaps I would have if I’d had the energy, but depression robs you of energy, of course. It robs you of so many things. So I had a few moments. A few of those _appels du vide_. Standing on a bridge over a river that was really far too shallow for anything, and fantasising about giving myself to the void.’

‘Oh, Illya,’ Napoleon says softly, sorrowfully. He wants to hug him, but there’s something in his face, something in his eyes, and he holds back. ‘Do you ever feel like that now?’ he asks instead.

Illya shrugs. ‘There are always moments, Napoleon. Everyone has moments, don’t they? Even Americans, even the eternal optimists? I mean, who’s more American than Hemingway? And didn’t he take a shotgun and shoot himself in the head?’

‘Some people are prone to depression, Illya, and it doesn’t matter what nationality they are. But – ’

‘But?’

‘There’s something fatalistic about the Russian psyche that scares me sometimes. If I’m totally honest it scares me sometimes.’

Illya laughs. ‘You think all us Russians are one step away from suicide because we have a realistic outlook? The world isn’t _that_ depressing, Napoleon. I’m no Hemingway. I’m certainly no Mayakovsky.’ At Napoleon’s quizzical look he says, ‘Russian poet. _Very_ famous. Killed himself at the age of 36. Being Russian, of course, he shot himself through the heart, not the head. We live in the heart, you see – or, at least, Mayakovsky did, and died in the heart, for love. But no, you don’t have to worry about me. For a start, I live at least as much in my head as in my heart, to the dismay of a dizzying array of friends and lovers. And to finish, I have a lot to live for. Dark moments come, and they pass. Such is life.’

‘Such is life,’ Napoleon echoes.

It’s hard to reconcile an idea of life that is so close to death, but of course all life is close to death. The nature of living is striving to not die. It is striving to find food and warmth and ease, to keep the heart beating and the blood moving and the lungs full of air. All of those things are a desperate attempt of biology and evolution to keep the body from the grave until its genes can be passed on to a new generation. But suicide is the antithesis to all of that. Suicide is closing the book before the story can be properly ended. It just seems so wrong.

‘If you _ever_ feel like that,’ he says seriously, looking straight into Illya’s eyes, not flinching away from the blue. ‘If you ever, ever feel like that, tell me,’ he says. ‘Call me. I don’t care what time it is. I don’t care what I have on my plate. I don’t care what I’m doing or where I am. Call me.’

Illya smiles. ‘You don’t have to be on suicide watch for me because I have admitted that sometimes I get low,’ he says.

But he places his hand over Napoleon’s, and Napoleon feels the living heat of his palm pressing into his own. He feels entropy seeking to equalise the heat between them, to make their warmth one between the two of them, one with all of the universe. Everything, he supposes, becomes one with the universe in the end. No energy can be created or destroyed, only transferred to other things. It is just that the thought of Illya’s energy leaving his body to disperse into the wider universe is such a terrible thing.

‘I will tell you,’ Illya promises. ‘And you will curse me for calling you up while you’re trying to make it with a beautiful blonde, or grab a shower, or _finally_ get some time alone to read.’

‘Never,’ Napoleon promises. ‘Never. I’ll be glad you called.’

‘Then I’ll call,’ Illya says, and Napoleon wonders if he really will, because Illya is such a self-contained unit in so many ways. He has the confidence and poise of a man who would leave his home country at twenty-two to live alone in a foreign city, and never return home. There are insecurities running through him like the seams in a slab of rock, but he is self-contained as a feral cat.

The warmth of Illya’s hand is still filtering down into his own. He can feel the strength of his fingers, the press of his bone. He is immensely alive and real, and Napoleon so deeply appreciates that their friendship is enough that Illya can trust him with the admission of his darkest thoughts.

‘Have you felt like that recently?’ he asks. ‘Recently enough that you should have called me? Recently enough to stand on the Brooklyn Bridge and look down into the water?’

Illya laughs then. ‘How often do I cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot?’ he asks, but he doesn’t answer Napoleon’s question, and Napoleon understands that perhaps some things are always meant to be left unspoken. Recent feelings are the most real, and the most raw.

‘All right,’ he says quietly. ‘But if you feel like walking over the Brooklyn Bridge I’ll walk with you. We can stand and look down at the water together. Then we can go home.’

‘Then we can go home,’ Illya echoes, and Napoleon feels that perhaps after all of his moving about the surface of the globe, Illya really has found his home. It might be a strange and alien place, the antithesis to everything he was brought up to value. It might be a place where he still sometimes feels _l’appel du vide,_ but perhaps he has found his home.


End file.
